VANITAS
: a journal of poetry, writings by artists, criticism, and essays. During its decade of intervention in the public realm, VANITAS came out quasi-annually, serving as a forum for international voices with an emphasis on coming to grips with current world situations. Each issue contained writings by artists whose primary modes were non-literary and featured the work of a visual artist. [www.vanitasmagazine.net]

Friday, June 6, 2014

All of a sudden she was so angry she began to tremble from her toes up.

And Amabel was just drying hers on a towel. The walls were made of
looking-glass, and were clouded-over with steam; from them her body was
reflected in a faint pink mass. She leaned over and traced her name
Amabel in that steam and that pink mass loomed up to meet her in the
flesh and looked through bright at her through the letters of her name.
She bent down to look at her eyes in the A her name began with, and as
she gazed at them steam or her breath dulled her reflection and the blue
her eyes were went out or faded.

She rubbed with the palm of her hand, and now she could see all her
face. She always thought it more beautiful than anything she had ever
seen, and when she looked at herself it was as though the two of them
would never meet again, it was to bid farewell; and at the last she
always smiled, and she did so this time as it was clouding over,
tenderly smiled as you might say good-bye, my darling darling.

...

Her bath-towel was huge and she slowly rubbed every inch
of herself with it as though she were polishing. She was gradually
changing colour, where she was dry she was going back to white; for
instance, her face was dead white but her neck was red. She was
polishing her shoulders now and her neck was paling from red into pink
and then suddenly it would go white. And all this time she was drying
herself she moved her toes as if she was moulding something.When Alex came to an end she had not properly heard what he had been
saying so she said something almost under her breath, or so low that he
in his turn should not catch what she had said, but so that it would be
enough to tell him she was listening.
As
she went over herself with her towel it was plain that she loved her
own shape and skin. When she dried her breasts she wiped them with as
much care as she would puppies after she had given them their bath, smiling all the time.
But her stomach she wiped unsmiling upwards to make it thin. When she
came to dry her legs she hissed like grooms do. And as she got herself
dry that steam began to go off the mirror walls so that as she got white
again more and more of herself began to be reflected.

She stood out as
though so much health, such abundance and happiness should never have
clothes to hide it. Indeed she looked as though she were alone in the
world and she was so good, and so good that she looked mild, which she
was not.

Tom Clark blogs on Vanitas Site!!

For the foreseeable future, Tom Clark has agreed to blog on the Vanitas magazine site! This is amazing news, as Tom is not only prolific — but also highly entertaining, a genius, extremely knowledgeable, etc. Look for the "TC" tag in front of his post titles — and enjoy!

Vanitas 7 : The Self

For the seventh and final issue of VANITAS, we examine the idea of The Self. The work featured in issue 7 tests just how far the self can be stretched, partially as an exercise in self-expression, partially in search of what used to be called experience. Self, not so much in personae as in faces, in the sense the Mods used the term — referring to someone with style, perhaps within a culture of style, but an individual expression of that culture, or perhaps someone who can seemingly invent her own style, just standing there.

Available from Libellum !!!

Tom Clark: The New WorldTom Clark: TRANS/VERSIONSWe are excited to announce the publication of not just one but two books by Tom Clark — first and foremost his remarkable collection of new poems, The New World. In these poems, Clark trains his limpid style and eye on current street life in Berkeley, California. Clark's observational skill is informed by acute social critique and most significantly a heightened sense of time's rapid passage. There is personal history here, too, in poems to Philip Whalen and Robert Duncan. Youth is seen in retrospect, working up to present tense, ultimate doubts as it ends, or seems to. This book is accompanied by Clark's TRANS/VERSIONS, seven poems that are translations or homages to modern masters. Available through Small Press Distribution.

Recent Libellum Publications : Norma Cole and Basil King

Norma Cole : Natural LightNorma Cole’s book presents new poems by a modern master of the found and formulated — this book is divided into three sequences: “Pluto’s Disgrace,” “In Our Own Backyard,” and “Collective Memory.” Personal, global, universal: all three shift and interlock in repeating cadences. Their lock on reality provides consolation for these times.

Basil King : In The Field Where Daffodils GrowPart of King’s series “Learning to Draw” that brings to bear his talents both as writer and visual artist. This book contains the autobiography of a painting and contemplation of some heroes — Hartley, H.D., Williams, Demuth, Giotto, Nijinsky, Emily Carr, Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. "Paintings stay alive because people look at them. And when they don't, they die."